DDR4 is real - but don't hold your breath waiting for it

DDR4 is real. That was the main takeaway from the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) panel discussion on the next-gen memory standard.

The great and the good of the memory industry, from Intel to Micron, were there trying to impress on everyone that the long-awaited successor to DDR3 is actually alive and well.

Though exactly how well it is still remains up for debate.

Server-side first

What isn't though is where it'll turn up first. DDR4 is set to be a server part for the time being with the desktop and notebook variants coming a good while after.

"We expect to see DDR4 in desktops and notebooks maybe a year after the server," explained a representative from Kingston on the show floor. If that's true we should see DDR4 filtering down into our desktop machines sometime in 2015 - memory companies are set to start shipping server-grade memory next year.

Samsung isn't so sure about the move to our desktops though.

Around the corner from the Kingston booth on the IDF floor was the Samsung booth, showing off its own selection of DDR4 modules. I asked if the South Korean company agreed with Kingston in terms of the consumer time frame and its representative was much more sceptical.

Samsung is predicting that DDR4 will most likely not turn up in our own machines until after 2015. That's a long way away and we could well have a very different computing ecosystem by then.